Marketing | No Smoke and Mirrors

“Skubala” Marketing, take a quick quiz to see if you qualify….

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How do you know if your marketing is effective? How do you even define the word “marketing”? Simply put; marketing is about understanding your market, what they need, solving and serving those needs, and letting everyone in your market know you solve those needs.

So how do you know if you’re practicing “marketing good for Skubala”? This is an old Greek word, and is harsh. There is no mystery in what this word means , so I thought I would use it.

Take this quick quiz…

1. Do you clearly understand the problem(s) your product or service solves?

2. Does your messaging tell your market what you solve?

3. Do you know the buyer types you serve; do you have written buyer persona’s?

4. Do you know the buyer’s buying process?

5. Do you know your sales process?

6. Can you match the sales tools marketing provides to specific stages of the buying process?

7. Have you created any new sales tools in the last six months?

Pretty quick quiz right? If you answered “no” to any one of the above you are probably practicing Skubala marketing. If you said no to three or more (all) you’re marketing is definitely Skubala. How do you quickly fix this?….be able to say yes to all of the above.

How do you define “marketing”?

How do you measure marketing’s contribution to your bottom line?

Where do you start to change your marketing to make it a core competency in your organization?

Are you creating a symphony for your market?…or just noise?

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To create a symphony you need multiple instruments playing at strategic times to create something the audience enjoys. It require planning, practice, and integration. Each note played either adds to the total experience or takes away from it.

Marketing is like creating a symphony in that you use instruments like the web, direct, blogs, PR, creative, social media,copy, media, and so on at just the right time , based on the needs of the market and its buying process. The only way you can insure what is pleasurable and more importantly useful to your audience is to thoroughly understand the markets needs and wants while understanding what each instrument does. You do not make those decisions in a board room or a weekly staff meeting. Your team does not make them by guessing, assuming, or relying on: “when I was in the market we …” You make them in the market speaking with customers and noncustomers alike. You gather data through open ended questions and your personal observations.

Buyers have patterns, processes,personas, and accompanying emotions connected to pain points. People buy with emotion then validate their decision with facts. One big emotion is trust;” can I trust you will do what you said you will do? That your product or service will solve my unresolved problem like you said it will?” Your integrated marketing therefore needs to build trust.

So what are the rules for integrated marketing that sounds like a symphony and not just noise?

1. Know your market and its problems

2. Know your buyers buying process and buyer personas

3. Identify where your buyers go to solve their problems

4. Create content that explains how your product or service solves your buyers problems

5. When they find you, “serve” them don’t “sell” them

6. Build trust

7. Be authentic, transparent

8. People buy from people

9. Attach the value of solving their problem

10. Speak with a unique voice for each of your buyer personas

11. Create learning’s -Measure and track everything you do

12. Feed the market in spoonfuls and not a fire hose

Are your buyers hearing beautiful music when they view your integrated marketing campaigns? Or are they inundated with noise? I don’t know about you, but when I hear a noise that annoys me I tune it out, I switch the channel until I find music that resonates with me.

Are your marketing instruments creating noise and your buyers and those who could be buyers are tuning you out? Chances are you are not connecting to the market problems and you are using instruments that may have worked fine 15 years ago but need fine tuning.

What are some other ways that marketing becomes noise, and worst an annoyance to the market?

What are some recent examples of marketing noise?

Want to add value to your bottom-line quickly?…Hire a Heretic!

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In Art Kleiner’s book titled: The Age of Heretics , Kleiner‘s definition of a heretic as: “a visionary who creates change in large-scale companies balancing contrary truths they can’t deny against their loyalty to their organizations.”He discusses how managers get stuck into a rut and need heretics to point out new points of view to get past the deadlock and move forward. Later he describes some as “rebels unwilling to kowtow to the corporate bureaucracy.”

One example of a heretic (and there are many in the book) is Jack Welch who gained a reputation as he climbed the ladder at GE as “ignoring or pushing back against, the bureaucratic strictures of his parent corporation.”

In Art Petty’s recent post this week titled : Help Wanted: Visionaries and Dreamer-Safe Return Doubtful Art refers to individuals who create great works of art on a blank canvas, they run towards adventure instead of away from it. Art goes on to say how we should channel our inner-Shackleton,(after the leader and explorer Ernest Shackleton ) and provides four lessons that apply to the adventurers called Heretics today. It reminded me that some people are cut out for adventure and some are not.

Having played the role of heretic in most of the companies I have served, let me tell you what to expect if you have the guts to hire one. A heretic is someone who will not take the easy road agreeing with key influencers throughout your organization. Obviously if what your key influencers are saying and or doing is in alignment with market needs they will, but if they hear something that is inconsistent with the vision of the organization or market needs they will tell you. Team members may feel this is a lack of loyalty. However to the contrary a heretic is singularly focused and loyal to one objective and that is adding bottom-line value to the team he serves, to aligning the organization to win profitably in their market. They will tell the CEO for example that his recent directive to the troops is not in alignment with market needs nor the core values and mission of the organization. He will remind the CEO that the mission statement is as much about what you will not do as much as what you will focus on.

A heretic does not know, or more importantly does not care, your VP of Marketing is your sister in law. He does not know or care that your VP of Sales was your fraternity brother at Ohio State, but he will tell you if that VP is not demonstrating the ability to lead his team in a direction aligned with market needs and your vision. A heretic will come into your organization and ask a lot of questions. Some of his questions will make you uncomfortable and definitely rock the foundations of some silos that have built throughout your organization. How will you as the leader of your organization know? You will recognize incoming torpedoes when you see them. If key influencers and leaders in your organization start using their relationship with you to shoot torpedoes at “the new guy” you know he’s asking uncomfortable questions.

The heretic will then want to spend a great deal of time in your market finding what he does not know. They may ride along with sales people, and often may engage with your customers on their own…LET THEM! Sales will balk, marketing will object, finance may say it’s too expensive, but let him dive into your market asking questions. What you will find if you shadow him ( and I strongly encourage CEO’s to do so) is he has an innate ability to make people feel comfortable and get customers talking. When you listen to him you will hear open ended questions, not questions to validate a current corporate understanding. He will seek to get to “why’s” much more that “what” and he really does not care about “who” . Who did that? Who said that?…He’s not out to find who did things wrong, but he seeks to gain an understanding of the market and its problems.

After spending time in your various departments, (and I should mention he will not just speak with leaders, but every level throughout the team) and spending time in your market with customers, non customers and market influencers… the fun begins.

The easy part is they will share with you what you are doing well, but not in his opinion, but the voice of the markets’. He will also share gaps, misalignments like poor positioning, branding, or a lack of sales tools to support the buying process he observed. He may hold your customer service or quality department’s feet to the fire over interruptions he found in speaking with your team and your market.

Heretics reshape organizations to be market focused and thus the organizations become market leaders. Market leading companies are over 30% more profitable, grow faster, have higher customer satisfaction and higher morale.Their radical thinking throughout history has reshaped corporate management ( and our society) as we know it today, and they will create the market leading organizations of tomorrow.

So how about your organization, how do you know if you need to hire a heretic?

1. Lack of EBITDA growth

2. Your leaders speak in terms like “I think” verse sharing authentic market feedback and data

3. No one on your team challenges you as the leader

4. Your team has many meetings but you do not discuss topics that matter

5. Your salespeople sell your product or service like it is a commodity

6. The last two product launches failed to meet ROI projections

7. Your salespeople are creating their own sales tools

8. Your leadership team spends more time covering their own butts that talking about growing your business

9. If you are on your third advertizing firm in 18 months

10. If you answered a question with something like; “because that’s the way do things here…” in the last three months

11. If your competitor just released something that seems to “be selling itself” instead of your team introducing it

12. If the distribution of marketing funds to various vehicles like; print, web, trade shows, direct, social media, has not changed in the last 12 months

13. If reading this post made you feel uncomfortable

What are some other signs that companies should intentionally hire a heretic?

How would a heretic be received in your organization?

As the CEO, what’s more important …increasing the economic value of the corporation, or being the one who has all the answers?

A backpacker’s advice when we feel lost in business…

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I was sharing with a friend who is an avid backpacker that a number of clients feel lost in today’s economy. Today is unlike anything they have experienced before and they feel lost. The things that always “worked” before, do not seem to apply now. As we discussed this my friend Jim said “well you know what they teach backpackers? We teach backpackers when they are lost to; STOP.

Sit

Think

Observe

Plan

As I drove home that night I thought how profound that advice is for business leaders and owners today. I see so many business owners thrashing around, busy with tasks (tactics) that they have always done and hope they will change their current circumstance. It is difficult to just stop. Yet the reality of thrashing around without focus only depletes our resources and exhausts us. Exhausted and afraid we are not able to make rational (strategic) decisions which results in our becoming even more lost, and increasing the potential danger. Like a tire stuck in the mud some of us keep pressing the accelerator only to sink deeper into trouble and making more of a mess.

When we STOP, we replace activity and busyness with stillness. We stop depleting resources aimlessly throwing everything at the wall in hopes it sticks and allowing us to conserve our energy for more strategic effort at a later time. In a quiet state we can recognize what resources we have, where we are, where we have been, and accurately assess and observe the reality of the moment. In this state you may choose to make camp and seemingly do nothing. Rescuers will tell you when lost; the best way to be found is to not move. You may notice a landmark you failed to see while thrashing deep in the brush. Once still new options become evident.

When we STOP thrashing around in busyness and we can make our plan. Planning after thinking and being intentional about your future movements or non movement coupled with a thorough understanding of what is reality prepare us to make the most effective and efficient plans.

Plans give us focus, purpose, and an objective to rally behind. When we plan we naturally review a variety of scenarios so we create alternative plans that we may engage as we gather new information or encounter new challenges. The old saying “when we fail to plan we plan to fail “affirms this advice.

How about you? Have you taken the time to STOP over the last six months? If not, how’s that working for you?

Deciding to STOP could be the most valuable exercise you can do for your business and yourself.

Branding with Intention or by default? …Four questions to ask your brand manager

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One of the most important items every company must address is its brand.

Some of the questions that come up when I meet with future clients include:

What do we want to be known for…what problems do we solve for our customers?

Who are we today, and where do we want to be tomorrow in relation to the needs of the market?

What does your brand represent to your market?

What is the promise of our brand?

Those questions get the conversation moving, but to talk about branding alone is not enough. Companies must brand with intention. Branding with intention means consciously deciding who you are, what you represent in the space you choose to play in, and most importantly clearly defining your value proposition. How do you want others (potential buyers and the communities they interact with) to know you? When I wrote my book Branding Backwards my goal was to help the business owner understand this concept of branding with intention or by default.

The market will determine your brand, and basically brand you by default if you do not intentionally brand your business.

You must clearly state the problems you solve better than anyone else and reinforce them in everything you do.

Ask your market what they feel your brand represents.

Do you find your brand promise is clearly stated in the voice of your customers or fuzzy and unclear?

When you ask clients and prospects what they feel your brand represents do you find their answers are consistent with your intention?

How much thought do you give to the promise of your brand?

Your “gut” and “intuition” are not enough…today

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When I wrote my first post titled “ Do you know what you don’t know” I was brought back to a time when I was in my mid twenties serving a rapidly growing small company. I was a young manager and full of “piss and vinegar” eager to kick ass and take names. Our entire team was the same age give or take 5 years of age. We were growing rapidly and then hit a plateau . None of us had experienced this before so we hired a coach. One of the coaches’ reconditions was to bring in someone with more experience and a few gray hairs to balance the leadership team. At the time we hired Larry we were making decisions like we always did, but they were not working,and not having the desired impact. We hired Larry with his over 25 years experience and immediately we could feel his experience balance our decisions and quickly we were back on our rapid growth path.

I was so impressed with his calm and knowledgeable approach that I took him to lunch to figure out his secret. So over a great lunch discussing his past business experiences I asked the question burning inside me; “ Larry, how can I get what you have? This ability to see situations, analyze potential strategies in this different way?” I will never forget his answer ; “ Mark, you don’t know what you don’t know, and time and experience is the only way to get what you are looking for.” At that time I was frustrated by that answer. Now that I am the guy in my late forty’s with graying hair I finally understand what Larry was teaching me. Their is no better teacher than time. The danger comes in when all we rely on is our training and experience.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s best selling book Blink he talks about what Larry had back then. Was it a gut instinct, business intuition, or something else? In the book blink as one of the comments from my first post points out , over time , subconsciously we acquire information and this the author points out helps us make good decisions. Like other strengths however I believe relying on this alone can be a detrimental weakness. What Larry taught us was to take current market information and use the intuition to write strategies that result in explosive sales growth.

Intuition, “gut instinct” if you will , is but one component of making good decisions.Your instinct and intuition are a culmination of your life experiences, training and education which ultimately helps you know what you know.It also acts as a filter for what you see and experience in the future.

The problem occurs when you allow this inner voice to be your only decision making tool. Why? The biggest issue is your information is dated. The moment you experience something, it becomes the past. The unique set of circumstances that you experienced will never be exactly the same again. So how can we rely so much on what got us through the last challenge will get us through this one? The big risk is , if taken too far your team will no longer believe in you as the leader and label your leadership as “clueless” in their minds. Once this occurs you are destined for a downward EBITDA spiral . So how do we know if we are sounding clueless to our team? Guy Kawasaki wrote a brilliant blog titled How to tell if your CEO is clueless that I recommend everyone read.

So are leaders clueless or just arrogant, both? The definition of arrogance is : an attitude of superiority manifested in an overbearing manner or in presumptuous claims or assumptions. Executives who rely on their gut instinct, their personal intuition alone are arrogant in today’s economy.

Today we face conditions unlike any we have ever experienced. Today is not like the great depression, the dot com bust, or the last time the oil fields were burning in Iraq. Today we see a toxic economic cocktail of ;housing declines and foreclosures, financial institutions in peril, oil prices climbing, a new President, economic advisors ( experts) grasping at straws, unemployment reaching 15 year lows…all shaken not stirred by access to instant information causing huge swings in the stock market and ultimately consumer confidence.So I thought it would be interesting to ask CEO’s how they solve problems today.

When I surveyed CEO’s recently I asked a simple question; “where do you turn when faced with a problem in your business?” At first the answers were all over the board. However three answers bubbled to the top;

1. my network (I phone a friend)

2. my board, my business advisors

3. I get my team together and we figure it out

My concern with all of theses answers implies those you are turning to are closer to the conditions of the market of today than you are ( or have a bigger or smarter “gut”). I have to admit when I was faced with a challenge with a company I was helping in 2002 the first thing I did was reach out to my network, and that alone was wrong. Today requires critical thinking that includes a strong deep connection and understanding of to your market, it’s needs, and it’s buyers coupled with instinct and experience to weather this storm. So what should we do , as we lead our organizations ?

Below are six steps I recommend;

1. quantify “what is” (without judgments attached)

2. build an intimate knowledge of your market and particularly its problems

3 understand your team, strengths, weaknesses, and insure you have a team with skills to solve the market problems you discover

4. look for what is working (and find out why)

5. humble yourself ( yes you heard me right) authentically admit what you do not know, and seek information

6. as Steven Covey said “sharpen the saw” we must invest in self improvement,the book what got you here won’t get you there does a great job of explaining this

Today is not like yesterday, and tomorrow will not be like today. As leaders we must constantly balance our intuition with new market data and critical problem solving skills to be more agile to come out ahead in today’s market.

Where do you turn when you face a business challenge?

How’s that working for you today?

Image from Fast Company article; Going for the gut

Introducing the no smoke and mirriors approach to marketing and sales

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The days of sales and marketing being two separate functions with independent performance indicators are over.

The buyers of today are better educated and have access to marketing created sales tools independent of their salesperson. The traditional sales funnel is now full of holes with customers and future customers coming and going at their leisure. Therefore sales models of the past are not working in the markets of today.

The paradigm of marketing and sales being two independent teams is a broken model.